RALEIGH, N.C. — Jerry Helms and his bride Connie were honeymooning in Long Beach, on North Carolina's southeastern coast, when they went to a roller skating rink in nearby Shallotte on the evening of Oct. 14, 1954.

Hurricane Hazel batters Moorehead City, N.C., on Oct. 15, 1954.

AP file

When they returned, lights were out and the community — mostly fishermen at that time of year - was quiet.

They never learned of the evacuation warning that beach residents received in advance of Hurricane Hazel. While they were out, police officers had gone door to door, advising people to flee.

The newlyweds ended up riding out Hazel on Long Beach — and only barely living to tell the tale.

In a recent interview, Jerry Helms recalled watching a house float by as he and his wife sought shelter in a two-story house near the mobile home where they honeymooned.

"(A) man was standing in the door of that house," Helms said. "He was hollering at us. And we couldn't help him, and he couldn't help us."

Helms believes the man died, his body found buried in sand.

Hazel, which made landfall at the border between North Carolina and South Carolina between 9:30 a.m. and 10 a.m. on Oct. 15, 1954, remains the only Category 4 storm to hit North Carolina in modern times and strongest modern storm to strike so far north.

Hazel's surge was a record — 18 feet above mean low water at Calabash. The storm struck at the same time as the highest lunar tide of the year, the full moon of October, boosting the surge by several feet.

And that was before the storm barreled through the eastern United States, wreaking devastation far to the north.

"Its impact in Canada and all through the eastern seaboard was tremendous," said Jay Barnes, author of "North Carolina's Hurricane History."

A half-century ago, there were no satellites, no 24-hour weather radio, no Weather Channel to give those who lived in Hazel's path warning of what was coming. In the final hours before the storm struck, coastal radar provided some hint, and people were asked to leave the waterfront — if they were home to get the warning.

With winds of 150 mph at landfall, the storm swept ashore at 30 mph, then picked up speed. Over Virginia, Hazel had a forward speed of 50 mph.

By 10 p.m., 12 hours after landfall, the storm was in Buffalo, where it united with a front, intensifying in both wind speed and rainfall, and hammered Toronto. A headline in the Buffalo News the next day read, "300 missing, 27 Dead in Toronto Storm."

The remnants of the storm passed the Arctic Circle and eventually made their way to Scandinavia, where they finally dissipated, according to Barnes' research.

"It was a cataclysmic situation," says Gene Tomlinson, 77, of Southport, who rode with a friend in a four-wheel-drive vehicle to see the devastation at Long Beach.

"It looked like where a bomb exploded," says Tomlinson, who now chairs the state's Coastal Resources Commission. "Pieces of houses were in all directions, and power poles were in every direction. I don't recall seeing a single entire house down the entire beachway."

Similar devastation was repeated throughout the east.

Wind gusts near 100 mph were reported in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey and New York. Thirteen people were killed in Virginia and 26 died in flash floods in western Pennsylvania. Twenty-one people died in New York state.

In North Carolina, Barnes estimates that on top of the 19 people killed, more than 200 were injured; 15,000 homes and structures were destroyed and 39,000 damaged. Thirty counties reported major damage; property losses totaled $136 million in 1954 dollars.

On Long Beach — now known as Oak Island — 352 of 357 buildings were completely destroyed.

The Helmses' marriage ended in the mid-1960s, and Connie Helms is now Connie Ledgett. But Jerry Helms still has vivid memories of their honeymoon's unwelcome interloper.

As Hazel came ashore, he and his wife fled her mother's mobile home, seeking safety in a two-story home where they pulled themselves up a handrail on an outside staircase, then broke through a door.

The wind and water brought other houses straight at them, Jerry Helms recalled.

"At one time, a house came straight toward us, and we though, 'Oh, Lord, this is it,'" Helms said. "We had seen another explode right in the air coming toward us. ... but this house is coming close to us. All of the sudden, it veered around."

It wasn't long before ocean waves swamped the couple's refuge. His wife couldn't swim, so Helms pushed a mattress through the top-floor window and got her on it with a blanket tied around her. Holding on to other end of the blanket, he jumped in the raging water.

"We were just swept right away," Helms said. "A big breaker came over and washed us away. We washed around out there for I don't know how long, but it seemed like eternity."

The two ended up in a tree, lying on the mattress and using the blanket as protection from the rain, which hit them like rifle pellets.

"When it was over, we couldn't see nothing nowhere," Helms recalled. "We couldn't hear nothing. It seemed like the world had come to an end. We thought we was the only people left in the world.

"Eventually, we looked around and saw the sun and the water. The island looked like it was rising, and the water started going out. It looked like the island was rising out of the ocean."

They climbed about 30 feet down to the ground and started walking as water rushed around them, headed back to the Atlantic.

The National Hurricane Research Division of NOAA ranks Hazel as the 13th most intense storm ever to hit the United States, behind several unnamed storms in the 1900s, Andrew, Camille, and Carla, Donna and Hugo.

Hurricane researcher Chris Landsea has tried to equate the damage done by a wide array of storms, taking into account inflation, population changes and increases in property values. His rankings place Hazel 17th, estimating that in 2003 dollars, the storm would have done $9.54 billion in damage.

The storm's 95 U.S. deaths do not include as many as 1,000 Haitians killed before by the storm before it struck the United States or the 100 people who died in Canada.

Margaret Harper, 87, of Durham lived in Southport and had a house in Long Beach that Hazel destroyed.

"We didn't know where it was headed, like they do now," she said. "We had several days notice that a bad storm was coming, but we didn't have ways to measure it like they do now. It's a whole different ballgame now."

Harper and her husband chose not to rebuild.

"I settled with the insurance company and went to Europe the next summer," she said. "When we did build, we built in the middle of the woods on Bald Head Island. I wasn't about to go back to the beach again.

"I think people take an awful chance when they build on the water."

Helms stayed in the area, but now evacuates whenever a hurricane threatens.

"I don't want to sit here and watch anything else disappear," he said. "People just don't realize how bad it can get."

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